Faith and the darkness of the understanding: is the night of the intellect a renunciation of reason and of meditation on Christ, or the only means proportioned to knowing God?

John of the Cross, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

John of the Cross answers

Neither a renunciation of reason nor a putting-away of Christ. The darkness is in the object, not in the faculty. Faith, as the theologians define it, is a certain and obscure habit, and it is obscure because it makes us believe truths God Himself has revealed, truths that surpass the light of reason and lie beyond all human understanding. So the excess of light in faith is darkness to the soul, as the sun blinds the eye by a light out of proportion to its power of sight.¹

The understanding of itself knows only in a natural way, beginning from the senses; it holds the forms and likenesses of things, and knowledge is born of an object and a faculty. If a man born blind is told that one thing is white and another yellow, the word remains with him through the ear, but the figure of the colour escapes him, for he has never seen it.²

So with God. No form the understanding can fashion has any proportion to Him. That is why faith, which tells of Him as He is, is the means, and why it must be dark to the faculty that receives it. The reason is not despised; it is carried to the edge of what it can bear, and there another light takes over. The same holds of the supernatural light that works in contemplation.

The purer and simpler it is, the more it darkens the soul as to all its apprehensions and affections, because supernatural things are the more dark to the understanding the more clear they are in themselves. A sunbeam crossing a room is seen the less distinctly the cleaner the air, since we see light only by what it strikes.³ You will find the soul worse off in this darkness than before, with a memory so weakened that hours pass and it knows not what it did; that is not decline but God Himself working where the soul is powerless.⁴

As for meditation on Christ, I do not forbid it, and I do not tell any soul to leave Him. I speak of the imaginings by which we picture Christ on the cross, or bound to the pillar, or God on His throne in majesty, which are works of the senses and serve beginners as a discursive act through figures and forms.⁵ I say those forms must be emptied out of the soul, so far as sense is concerned, if it is to attain divine union, because they bear no proportion to the proximate means of that union.⁶

The soul lets go the picturing, which was its own work, and keeps the faith the picturing was serving. Nor is the leaving to be done before its hour; the soul is to be weaned, and the prophet's word is that knowledge is taught to them who are weaned from the milk and plucked from the breasts. The soul stands upright and does not lean on the affections of sense, and out of this night springs first the knowledge of oneself, and on that, as on a foundation, the knowledge of God.⁷

The Psalmist does not say that his sweetness or his meditations brought him to see God's glory; he says it was the desert land, inaccessible and without water, which is his inability to meditate.⁸ This is what the first redaction of my Canticle calls understanding without understanding. It is not done by the active intellect working on forms and phantasies, but received in the understanding as passive, which takes in a substantial intelligence given without any work of its own.⁹

The night is serene, bare of all clouds of forms and of the vapours of appetite, as the ray of the sun is dim to the bat's eye, so the highest things of God are dark to ours.¹⁰ Faith is the only road proportioned to Him. The darkness is where the soul is made able to bear Him.

The position in brief

Nothing the understanding can grasp, by sense, imagination, reasoning or vision, has any proportion to God, who exceeds all of it infinitely; so none of it can be the proximate means of union.¹¹¹² Faith is that means, because it tells the soul of God as He is, and it is darkness to the understanding because it is too much light. Discursive meditation is needed by beginners and is to be left neither sooner nor later than when the three signs show that God has begun to give a general, loving knowledge in its place. Reason is not condemned but surpassed, and Scripture and the Church judge whatever the soul thinks it has received.¹³

Sources

the excessive light of the faith is obscure darkness to the soul, because it subdues that which is great, and destroys that which is little, as the light of the sun puts out all other lights
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
if you tell a person blind from his birth that one object is white, another yellow, he would never understand what you mean, though you may speak to him for ever
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
the purer and clearer the supernatural and divine light the more is it in the soul
The Dark Night of the Soul
It is God Himself Who is now working in the soul, and the soul is therefore powerless.
The Dark Night of the Soul
We picture to ourselves Christ on the cross, or bound to the pillar, or God sitting on His throne in great majesty.
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
All these imaginations and apprehensions are to be emptied out of the soul, which must remain in darkness so far as it concerns the senses, in order that we may attain to the divine union, because they bear no proportion to the proximate means of union with God
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
Thus out of this night springs first the knowledge of one's self, and on that, as on a foundation, is built up the knowledge of God.
The Dark Night of the Soul
his inability to meditate on God, to form reflections by the help of his imagination; that is the inaccessible land.
The Dark Night of the Soul
it is done in the intellect as possible and passive, which does not receive such forms, etc., but passively receives substantial intelligence, which is given to it without any active office or work of its own.
A Spiritual Canticle, first redaction
so this night of contemplation is, for the sight of the understanding, bare and free from all clouds of forms and phantasies and particular knowledge which can enter by the senses
A Spiritual Canticle, first redaction
So, therefore, if the understanding is to be united with God, so far as that is possible in this life, it must, of necessity, make use of those means which can effect that union, and which are most like unto God. 3. But remember, among all creatures, the highest and. the lowest, there is not one that comes near unto God, or that bears any likeness to His substance.
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
Soalso nothing that the imagination may conceive or the understanding comprehend, in this life, is or can be a proximate means of union with God.
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
Therefore say not: Oh, the soul does not advance, because it does nothing; for if it is true that it does nothing, by the very fact that it does nothing I will prove to you here that it does much.
The Living Flame of Love, second redaction

Where the argument is made

Ascent II.1-9 (II.2 on faith as the midnight of the road, II.3 on faith as a dark night with proofs from reason and Scripture, II.4 on the darkness needed to be guided by faith, II.8 that no creature and no knowledge the understanding can comprehend is a proximate means of union, II.9 that faith is the proximate and proportionate means), II.7 on the narrow way and Christ's abandonment on the cross, II.12-15 on imaginary forms and meditation with the three signs of II.13, II.22 on Christ as the whole word
Ascent III.34-36 on images (Lewis's numbering)
Dark Night I.9-10, II.5 and II.16-17 on dark contemplation and the security of the soul in darkness
Living Flame 3 on directors who drag the soul back to meditation
the Canticle prologue on submitting experience to Scripture and the Church

How the argument was received

Read by Thomists as faithful to St Thomas, by Protestant readers as a doctrine of faith alone, and by critics of mysticism as a contempt for the intellect; the humanity of Christ ties it to Teresa.